[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the huntington’s japanese garden

After vis­it­ing the dense and some­what fre­netic new Chi­nese Gar­den at the Hunt­ing­ton I was feel­ing like I needed to unwind a bit. For­tu­nately a short walk at the Hunt­ing­ton deliv­ers you from the Chi­nese Gar­den to the Japan­ese Gar­den.

Along the way, before you get to the gar­den itself, as if in a cal­cu­lated attempt to tran­si­tion the viewer from one gar­den to the next, you pass a cou­ple bloom­ing plants that have “Japan” in their species name. Although most of the camel­lias in bloom were the sansan­quas, a few of the Camel­lia japon­ica plants were start­ing their bloom.

And there was this perky yel­low species, Far­lugium japon­icum–with a plant label (Thank you!–I love my plant labels).

One of the first details that I noticed in the Japan­ese Gar­den was this walk­way edge detail con­sist­ing of lit­tle loops of thin bamboo.

Whereas many of the hard­scape ele­ments in the Chi­nese Gar­den seemed to be built to last for the centuries–this photo shows one of the edg­ing details there–the frag­ile lit­tle detail in the Japan­ese Gar­den appeared to be set up to cel­e­brate the ephemeral.

All the approaches to the gar­den deliver the vis­i­tor to high van­tage points over­look­ing plant­i­ngs around a small pond. A moon bridge pro­vides a focal point.

A recre­ated tra­di­tional upper-class Japan­ese home occu­pies the high­est spot in the garden.

Its doors slide open so that the view from the house is of this gar­den. Stand­ing out­side, you can peer in and get a sense of how life indoors would look like and feel. This struc­ture was moved to this site in 1912, so it and the gar­dens have been around many more years than the Chi­nese Gar­den next door.

Steps from the home lead down and then back up to a walled garden.

A broad walk­way divides the gar­den into two parts. To one side is a sym­bolic gar­den of stones and raked gravel, or Kare­san­sui.

To the other side is a sim­ple plant­ing of clipped aza­leas, ginkgo trees and what I’m guess­ing is lawn. The lawn and the tops of the aza­leas mounds, how­ever, were cov­ered with fallen leaves off the ginkgo trees. I loved this space in its sim­plic­ity and could have spent hours there.

A very few of the ginkgo trees still held on to their star­tling yel­low leaves.

But most of the leaves on the ground were pro­gress­ing from bright yel­low to tan to brown.

Here’s a sug­ges­tion for the Hunt­ing­ton: How about set­ting up a ginkko hot­line or RSS or Twit­ter feed? Desert parks com­monly offer wild­flower hot­lines to alert you of peak flow­er­ing. Some­thing sim­i­lar to let you know when the falling leaves would be at their most spec­tac­u­lar would be great too. Still, it was a gor­geous effect, and it high­lighted the nat­ural process of bright yel­low leaves aging into less col­or­ful ones.

After the walled gar­den is a bon­sai court con­tain­ing some spec­tac­u­lar spec­i­mens in a sim­ple, rus­tic set­ting. The Hunt­ing­ton is in the process of enlarg­ing the dis­play area to make room for more bon­sai.

My last shots from the Japan­ese Gar­den are of two gor­geous stands of bam­boo. A small grove adja­cent to the “model home” has a small wooden path­way through it.

A more mas­sive stand occu­pies a spot at the edge of the gar­den.

Inside the dark thicket Camel­lia sasan­qua blooms.

What is it about a grove of bam­boo that dri­ves vis­i­tors to carve their ini­tials into the culms? Grrrrrrr.

A final look at the rhythms and con­tra­pun­tal inter­play in the bamboo…

December 30 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: bamboo • bonsai • Ginkgo biloba • Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens • Japanese gardens • those autumn leaves • walled gardens | 9 Comments »

just about to be published

Linda brought by my desk the 2009 Spring cat­a­log of the Prince­ton Archi­tec­tural Press. She really like the photo on the cover, a plant­ing by Andrea Cochran, a San Francisco-based land­scape archi­tect and the sub­ject of a new book, Andrea Chochran: Land­scapes, which is just about to be pub­lished. (The project shown is the Ivy Street Roof Ter­race Hayes Val­ley Roof Gar­den in San Francisco.)

You may recall that Linda is a quil­ter, and the cover design really looks quilt-like in the way it’s put together: blocks of dif­fer­ent plant­i­ngs (not just blocks of sin­gle kinds of plants), all assem­bled together so that one group­ing of plants con­trasts dra­mat­i­cally against another, like one pat­terned fab­ric in a quilt that’s been set against another. In fact the author of of the book describes Cochan’s work as “stud­ies in rep­e­ti­tion and order, orches­tra­tions of move­ment in the land­scape, and ele­ments placed in geo­met­ric conversation”–which almost sounds like the prin­ci­ples oper­at­ing behind many quilts.

Check out Andrea Cochran’s web­site for other exam­ples of her strong, lin­ear land­scape designs.

Thumb­ing through the cat­a­log I ran across another title that made me stop for a closer look, Bam­boo Fences, by Isao Yoshikawa and Osamu Suzuki. The cat­a­log says that the book “pro­vides a detailed look at the com­plex art of bam­boo fence design in Japan, pre­sent­ing these unique struc­tures in over 250 pho­tographs and line draw­ings. From the widely used ‘four-eyed fence’ (yotsume-gaki) and the fine ‘rain­coat fence’ (mino-gaki) to the expen­sive ‘spice­bush fence’ (kuromoji-gaki), these exquis­ite designs impress with their sim­ple beauty, pro­vid­ing plenty of inspi­ra­tion for your own bam­boo fence.

“Author Isao Yoshikawa gives a brief overview of the his­tory of bam­boo fence build­ing in Japan and clas­si­fies the dif­fer­ent designs by type. A glos­sary pro­vides expla­na­tion of Japan­ese fence names and struc­tural terms.”

Of course, fences like this prob­a­bly wouldn’t work so well if your house is in the Tudor or Span­ish taste. Unless of course you want your home to develop a “home store Gothic” look that one writer called the look that sub­ur­ban houses accrue over time as their own­ers buy what­ever strikes their fancy at the local Home Depot, his­tor­i­cal accu­racy and style be damned.

But imag­ine these around a clean-lined mod­ern house. In fact, Richard Neu­tra was known to like his glass-walled homes to look out on a Japanese-styled land­scape. And some of the more geo­met­ric ver­sions might even look amaz­ing behind a land­scape designed the the sub­ject of the first book.…

Above: Images from the book, pho­tographed by Osamu Suzuki.

January 28 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: Andrea Cochran • bamboo • books • fences • hardscape • Princeton Architectural Press | 5 Comments »

the quilt’s progress

I wrote ear­lier about Linda offer­ing to make a wed­ding gift of a quilt for John and me. I got word last week that all the squares were com­pleted, and Sun­day I stopped by to con­sult on their arrangement.

Here’s how the quilt looked in its near-final ver­sion as it was all laid out on her liv­ing room floor. Come on every­one, tell Linda how gor­geous her quilt looks!

Linda likes to live with these arrange­ment deci­sions before stitch­ing things together, and we had fun mov­ing a few blocks around, fine-tuning the arrange­ment. On the table in front of the quilt you can see the rough mockup I did of the quilt after scan­ning the fab­rics and play­ing a morn­ing with Pho­to­shop. It ended up being a great way to pre-imagine how things would look. The blocks are in dif­fer­ent places, but the over­all quilt looks a lot like the early sketch.

The design is based on a quilt by Liz Axford that was exhib­ited in the Quilt Visions quilt show in 2002. Enti­tled “Bam­boo Boogie-Woogie,” that quilt was an abstracted take on bam­boo stems.

Speak­ing of bam­boo, it was an inter­est­ing bit of coin­ci­dence that the night before I’d attended a con­cert by the Hill­crest Wind Ensem­ble, a band that John some­times plays in. The venue was the Neu­ro­sciences Insti­tute in La Jolla, a nice piece of archi­tec­ture by Billy Tsien and Tod WIlliams, with strik­ing land­scap­ing done by the San Diego County firm of Bur­ton Asso­ciates. The grounds fea­ture this amaz­ing long rec­tan­gle filled with golden bam­boo that must be my favorite sin­gle plant­ing of bam­boo any­where. (The plant­ing is even more impres­sive by day, but that’s not when I was there…)

The bam­boo con­nec­tion goes even fur­ther. The archi­tects of the Neu­ro­sciences Insti­tute designed an exhi­bi­tion at the National Build­ing Museum devoted to con­crete as a build­ing mate­r­ial. Part of the space included these forests of steel rein­forc­ing rods, rebar, that are used to strengthen con­crete. At least to my eyes the instal­la­tion bears more than a pass­ing resem­blance to the bam­boo plant­ing at the Neu­ro­sciences Insti­tute. Or am I just delu­sional? (This photo by Frank Oude­man [ source ] )

But back to quilts…

Linda’s house, like the home of many quil­ters, is a one-person quilt show, with lots of great exam­ples of her work. I’m a pretty visual per­son and I can always look at more cool things. It so hap­pened that the Quilt Visions quilt bien­nial was hap­pen­ing up the coast at the Ocean­side Museum of Art. That was an obvi­ous exten­sion to the after­noon if I ever heard of one.

Some museum exhi­bi­tions allow pho­tog­ra­phy in the gal­leries, oth­ers don’t. Unfor­tu­nately this was one of those no pho­tog­ra­phy ones. You’ll have to take my word that the show had a few drop-dead spec­tac­u­lar art quilts, as well as sev­eral that spoke qui­etly and revealed their secrets slowly as you looked ever closer at them.

It’s the sort of show that will either inspire you to take up quilt­ing or to intim­i­date you into giv­ing up all hope of ever mak­ing any­thing beau­ti­ful out of fab­ric and thread. Even though I have a Y chro­mo­some and quilt­ing isn’t typ­i­cally a guy thing, I think I ended up being inspired. Now, some­one please give me a few months of free time so that I can start up yet another obsession…

And here’s one final pic­ture. The museum was part of a civic cen­ter com­plex designed by the archi­tect Charles Moore. The very com­fort­able, human-scaled build­ings take their design clues from Irv­ing Gill, San Diego’s most dar­ing archi­tect of the early 20th cen­tury. Gill used the Spanish-inspired arches of this region and stripped them down to their essen­tial geom­e­try: tra­di­tion and his­tory meets modernism.

Part of the com­plex is the Ocean­side Pub­lic Library, and here’s the pond in front of it. Sorry, no more bam­boo, but what a ter­rific way to plant palm trees, each on its own lit­tle geo­met­ric island…

November 20 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design | Tags: bamboo • Billie Tsien • Burton Associates • concrete • National Building Museum • Quilt Visions • quilts • Tod Williams | 1 Comment »

bamboozled

Yes­ter­day after­noon I had to run an errand up to coastal north­ern San Diego County. The des­ti­na­tion was two, three miles from Quail Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, in Encini­tas. Even with a pre­dic­tion for pos­si­ble rain­show­ers, it seemed like a worth­while stop, par­tic­u­larly since I hadn’t been there for three or four years.

Left: The entrance to Quail. Am I too much of a con­spir­acy the­o­rist in think­ing that the yel­low flow­ers and foliage were planted to coor­di­nate with the big yel­low arrow point­ing to the entry?

The first thing that hit me was the admis­sion charge, which for John and me totaled twenty bucks. If they hadn’t been host­ing a spe­cial event this week­end, there would have been an addi­tional charge to park.

When I first started going there the gar­den was oper­ated by San Diego County, and there either was no admis­sion charge, or it was neg­li­gi­ble. When the County hit finan­cial hard times in the 1990s, one of the first things they decided to cut was pub­lic sup­port for Quail. I’m a firm believer in pub­lic sup­port of open space and gar­dens like Quail, and to have to pay this kind of sur­charge is scan­dalous. To me it’s not an issue of my being cheap. Instead it’s a moral issue verg­ing on democ­racy, the col­lec­tive good, an notions of right and wrong.

The gar­dens are located in the county’s upscale coastal region, just a stone’s throw from the La Costa Resort and Spa, so the idea of pay­ing ten bucks to look at plants might not seem like any sort of hard­ship to much of the com­mu­nity. But think of all the peo­ple that can’t afford to take advan­tage of the grounds. But that’s our county for you. At least, to their credit, the grounds orderly and the plants are well-maintained.

Any­way, back to the visit: We parked and took in the grounds. One of the high­lights there is an impres­sive assort­ment of bam­boos. Their pam­phlet calls it “the nation’s largest col­lec­tion of bam­boo, from giant tim­ber bam­boo to exotic smaller bam­boos for your home gar­den.” It was enough to make me want to take out the remain­ing lawn and replace it with a stand of run­ning bam­boos. John was less enthu­si­as­tic about the idea.

It wasn’t hard to be impressed by the giant trop­i­cal bam­boo, Den­dro­cal­mus gigan­teus.

Some of the “smaller” bam­boos were pretty strik­ing as well. These are two shots of the striped blow­pipe bam­boo, Bam­busa dolichoclada ‘Stripe.’ The plants are still tall but how tall I can’t say. It’s like being down­town some­where: When you’re at the foot of a build­ing it’s some­times hard to tell if its a few sto­ries tall or one of the major skyscrapers.

Another of the bam­boos with var­ie­gated yellow-and-green stalks is this painted bam­boo, Bam­busa vul­garis ‘Vit­tata’, shown here with the var­ie­gated leaves of an uniden­ti­fied smaller-growing bam­boo. (A plant with­out a label? What kind of botan­i­cal gar­den is this?)

Not all of the bam­boos with var­ie­gated yel­low and green stalks are huge. Here’s a rel­a­tively man­age­able Alphonse Karr bam­boo, Bam­busa mul­ti­plex ‘Alphonse Karr.’

This Ben­gal bam­boo (Bam­busa tulda ‘Stri­ata’) also exhib­ited a bit of strip­ing, only in green and white. Only a few of the stalks had strip­ing, so it’s not as pro­nounced as on the pre­vi­ous selections.

One of the pro­grams Quail has is to incor­po­rate pieces of art within the gar­dens. Here’s part of an instal­la­tion of “Steeples,” eight col­or­ful ceramic totems by Christie Benis­ton. It’s set in the midst of a shady grove of a run­ning bam­boo species that I couldn’t find a label for.

This is the plant­ing that made me want to replace the cur­rent remain­ing patch of lawn. (Bam­boos are giant grasses, so con­cep­tu­ally I sup­pose you could call a bam­boo grove a giant lawn–and one you don’t have to mow!) Imag­ine open­ing the din­ing room door and hav­ing a grove of these pup­pies out­side. It prob­a­bly would cut down on the sun­bathing oppor­tu­ni­ties, but this would be an amaz­ing planting.

October 05 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • places • plant profiles | Tags: bamboo • botanical gardens • government funding • parks • Quail Botanical Gardens | 3 Comments »